"Say Matt, do you know that people in this world are awfully unfair to boys?"
"I guess I do," replied Matt, "but what made you think of it just now?"
"Why, my govenor gave me fits this morning about this bridge, and called me ungrateful and all sorts of things. I s'pose he thought he told the truth, but I know better. I'd do anything for him—I'd die for him. Why, one day that big mulatto Ijam, that he can never collect his bills of, came in looking awful ugly, and blazing about being sued, and I was sure he meant to hurt father; I just got a hatchet and stood outside the door, ready to rush in and tomahawk him if he did the least thing. It made me late at school, and I got licked for that, but I didn't care, and the teacher wrote a note home about it and I got scolded, but I didn't tell what I'd done."
"My father's the same way, sometimes," said Matt.
"I know he is," said Jack, hastily debating (with decision in the negative) whether he should tell of his own morning experience with Mr. Bolton.
"Now," continued Jack, "I've got to work all my holidays at something, I don't know what, until I earn enough money to pay my share of that bridge—you know the two govenors have had to settle for a new one?"
"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Matt.
"They have, this morning," said Jack. "I shouldn't wonder if you'd catch it when you go home, but there's some bully mullein leaves under the hill that you can put inside the back of your jacket."
Matt devoted some moments of disagreeable reflection to this topic; then his sense of companionship came to the surface, and he said—
"I'll help you, Jack—unless father punishes me in the same way. What do you suppose you'll have to do?"